[CMake] open source project for CMake ports?

[Bill Hoffman]

Philip Lowman wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Luigi suggested a kind of CMake ports system in a recent thread here on 
> the CMake mailing list.  This would presumably be a system whereby 
> popular 3rd party dependencies which have not yet CMakeified their 
> source trees could be CM'd and baselined in one place and ultimately 
> downloaded for easy incorporation into CMake projects (especially with a 
> goal towards MSVC/MinGW portability).  VTK seems to be doing this 
> internally for several of it's dependencies and the OSG project seems 
> interested in doing the same for similar reasons but would prefer not to 
> duplicate a bunch of work.  Since many of the dependencies overlap, is 
> there general interest in this kind of a thing from the VTK perspective 
> or from others?
> 
> The goal would be to create an open-source project (hosted probably at a 
> neutral site like SF.net or Google Code) where the ports could be 
> stored, baselined, etc. and then released so that anyone could download 
> whichever are needed and incorporate them into their own projects?  
> Export/Install support could also be built into the projects so that 
> they could be prebuilt and installed by others and used that way as well.
> 
> A tertiary goal would be convincing the 3rd party dependencies to switch 
> to CMake for their native build systems.
> 
> Does this sound interesting?
> 
I think it might be more interesting to start a campaign to push the 
cmake files into those projects.  Why shouldn't jpg,tiff,zlib, and 
friends not ship with good cmake files.  I guess if something like what 
you suggest was created, it might push the developers of those projects 
to accept the CMake files to avoid the partial fork in the project...


-Bill